Fools in love

As one who, in the sexy-greedy 1980s, used regularly to boast that I would be with my second husband "until the ravens leave the Tower, until the apes leave Gibraltar" (oh, puh-leeeze!), I feel this gives me the spiritual equivalent of a ringside seat, plus the moral high ground, from which to observe those fate-tempting show-offs whose proclamations of terminal domestic bliss are invariably followed within a week by lawyers' letters telling Hubby Dearest to collect his clothes in black bin-liners - don't touch Miss Thing's Vuitton, please! - and be off the marital property by nightfall.

Were public figures always so smug about their private happiness? Ava Gardner and Frankie Sin, Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles, Marilyn, Miller and DiMaggio: they said they were happy together, sure, but even in that era of marriage-worship and morals clauses, they weren't anywhere near as sickening as the modern crowd. Oh! Kate Winslet and her gush about Jim. Ouch! Angelina Jolie and her embarrassing swill about Billy Bob. They're soulmates, they're growing old together, they've picked out burial plots side by side; then, by the weekend, it's pressure of work, no one else involved, mutual respect and don't mention that scum- sucking bastard to me ever again, do you hear! (Film stars' "pressure of work" line never fails to crack me up; I wonder what proportion of firefighters and nurses claim that pressure of work broke up their marriages - and they'd be entitled to. Not many, I bet. Of course, stating that your marriage failed because you repeatedly had to snog and grope gorgeous strangers for a king's ransom doesn't have the same air of self-sacrificing nobility about it.)

If you had to pick the next celeb union to go pffft (a film of this title was actually made in the 1960s, it allegedly being the noise a marriage makes when it shatters), be honest, wouldn't it be Madonna and Guy's? Where did we get the idea that this broad was clever? It's just one of those mad 1980s theories, such as red braces being sexy or capitalism having won for ever. Anyone with half a brain would have learned from recent cultural history: if you bliss-boast, you're toast! But there she goes again, jabbering away like a Stepford Wife on steroids: "Guy's a real macho... I'm attracted to guys who stand up to me," the woman who prefers to be known as "Mrs Ritchie" told the New York Times. Furthermore, "He would just say, 'OK, wife, over there'." And, presumably, if she didn't move there quick enough, he'd grab her by the hair and put her there.

A mistake lots of famous women make when they marry men who are younger and/or less successful is to go into this embarrassing parody of an Eisenhower housewife every time they make a public announcement. You've heard it 100 times: at home, they're just the little woman, hubby rules the roost, he may not be as famous as little me, but he's the one with the real talent, plus he's a sex machine!

The joke is that these women are such egotistical monsters, expecting total subservience from every poor sucker they meet, that they don't know how to conduct a relationship based on anything like equality. When they talk about their domestic bliss, they're like monkeys who've been taught to have tea parties - they go so far over the top in trying to appear "normal" that they're extremely amusing. And reading the amusement as admiration, they become even sillier in their antics, until they end up like Angelina, wearing Billy Bob's blood around her neck.

The husbands, who generally aren't as deeply mired in fame's distorting hall of mirrors, must read these camp pronouncements and wonder what they've got themselves into. It's fun for us, but it's insulting to them, to have a wife who believes you're a delicate flower who needs a 24/7 cheerleader to prevent your paper-thin ego from collapsing. And there always comes a point when the real woman appears at last, busting through the frilly, submissive facade like a brassy stripper jumping out of an innocent cake. In the case of Madonna, it came when she revealed that Ritchie likes cooking (the big girl!), only to have him deny it: "The last time I cooked was six months ago!" In answer, she couldn't resist slyly putting him in his place: "That's not true - you like to cook and don't fib. People aren't going to think you're less macho."

Well, we are, actually, but only because the Man Of Steel image Madonna has manufactured for her husband doesn't sit easily with the image of Mr Ritchie fretting over his bouillabaisse. Women such as Madonna don't seem to have cottoned on to the fact that men such as Ritchie don't marry them because they fancy a nice little sycophantic housewife buzzing around them - they marry a stroppy bitch because they fancy a challenge.

The changing of the name is a sure sign that the more famous and powerful woman is trying a mite too hard to convince hubby he's the boss, and it didn't work massively well for the ex Mel G, Pamela Anderson Lee and Joanne Whalley-Kilmer. But no man wants a doormat, unless he's a tosser; as John Wayne said to Susan Hayward's ball-breaking Tartar princess, "You're beautiful in your wrath." Many men have left nice girls for bitches - but no one ever leaves a bitch for a nice girl.